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LVC South Asia

(India, January 16, 2015) In the past year, LVC India built solidarity through three knowledge exchanges with our comrades from the Landless Workers Movement (MST), in Brazil. This came as a beneficial follow-up to our work in 2013 (see story here about the trip to Bihar shared with Karnataka Farmers).

In March, we hosted Adalberto “Pardal” Martins for ten days traveling throughout Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, and Karnataka. Pardal is a long-time member of MST, and has contributed in many areas, including the organization of production and cooperatives, agroecology, and political training. His visit occurred at the timely juncture of the political division of Andhra Pradesh into two states – Andhra and Telengana. Telengana was born of a historical struggle for land against feudal landlords, one of many commonalities with the narrative of the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil.

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Citizen mobilization prevented a multilateral free-trade agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in particular for agricultural products. In response, the European Union (EU) is going to negotiate bilateral free-trade agreements in all directions. They would like to drive agriculture and the food industry to the most unbridled heights of liberalism. Download the brochure to read more! DEFEND EMPLOYMENT, FOOD SOVEREIGNTY, PEASANT FARMING AND LIFE OF ALL TERRITORIES!

La Via Campesina visits Douro small wine growers in solidarity with their struggle against exploitation by traders

(Porto, Portugal, 25 November 2014) On November 24th, 2014, following meetings of the LVC International Coordinating Committee (ICC) and the International Operative Secretariat (IOS), a La Via Campesina delegation, comprising 87 participants from 25 countries, visited vineyards owned by family farmers in the demarcated region of the Douro district. This field visit was organized by Confederação Nacional da Agricultura (CNA) and guided by one of its member organisations, AVIDOURO, an association of small wine growers.

According to La Via Campesina member organisation CNA, an association representing Portugese small to medium farmers, the biggest share of the subsidies paid in Portugal, about 70%, is received by only 5% of the farms. The remaining 30% is shared by the other 95% of farms, of which small and medium farms constitute the majority. Small and medium farmers, on the other hand, are heavily taxed.

During the first nine days of November, a number of representatives of social and political movements, trade unions, and farmers’ organisations from Euskal Herria and Andalucia (Spain) visited Palestine, in response to an appeal from La Via Campesina. The group’s mission was to monitor human rights violations in the region, especially with regard to the rural majority, who are both the country’s economic motor and the main target of the Israeli Zionist regime’s colonialist policies.

Through the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Palestine and its local committees, we were able to observe the methodical depravity of Israel’s treatment of Palestine society in general and of the rural majority in particular. This treatment shows a disregard for all the rules of international humanitarian law as well as for the obligations that the 4th Geneva Convention imposes on Israel, as an occupying power, with respect to the Palestinian population under occupation. As of today, in its criminal construction, Israel is employing policies and measures that constitute Apartheid, a situation that is being denounced by the principal human rights bodies of the United Nations and by Palestinian - as well as Israeli - social organisations. Apartheid in Palestine manifests itself in a political, economic, and social system that is dominated by discrimination and oppression, a system in which freedom of movement is forbidden and territory is appropriated in order to consolidate the existence of the Israeli State.